Monday morning as I drive to work, I can see people rushing with tense faces. Threatening deadlines, pending workload and missed work can increase stress and have a negative impact on health. Whenever I come across a colleague who is stressed I just tell him to relax. Firstly, everyone deserves to relax, and it takes very less time. When you relax, it gives you great benefits. Yes, to chill out, you need not resort to any long drawn out methods or spend a week in a tropical island. Trust me it takes only a few minutes to make yourselves relax, and be your true self. Here are some ways by which you can do this.

Meditation

You can practice mediation for a few minutes daily. It reduces anxiety largely. Studies on the effect of meditation on human brain reveal that it can alter the neural pathways of brain making you resilient to stressful situations. What you need to do is very simple.

Sit straight and keep both feet touching the ground. With eyes closed, focus your mind on positive thoughts. It can be anything such as ‘I’m peaceful’ or ‘I’m strong and healthy’. You can do it silently or recite the words loudly. Synchronize the words with your breathing. Allow distracting thoughts to drift away like clouds.

Deep breathing

Yes, breathing helps in keeping out stress. It is common practice to take a deep breath and count until ten, whenever you are too angry or stressed out about something. It helps you to calm down and take the right perspective of a situation. Similarly, a five-minute breathing session can get you to relax effectively. Sit straight and with eyes closed keep a hand on your stomach. Inhale slowly through the nose. Feel the breath travel from your abdomen and move to your head. Now reverse the technique and exhale through mouth.

Deep breathing lowers heart rate and the blood pressure. So it keeps you from being affected by stress.

I’d recently been on a weeklong trip with my family. It was both refreshing and relaxing as we had spent a wonderful time together and being far away from the busy and stress-filled routine of daily work helped us to chill out and savour every minute. It was like detox for our mind and body. Even if you live in a beautiful city or town, lead an active social, and work life, nothing can compare to the unique experience that traveling presents.

When you visit a new place or foreign country, you get to see an entirely new way of living. You’ll return back appreciative of their way of living and widen your knowledge about life and its purpose. Since we all have only one life passing up the chance to travel and see new places is like forgoing the pleasure of getting a life changing experience. If you are still not convinced of the need for travel, here are some benefits you’ll surely assent to.

Discover yourself

One of the best reasons is travel helps you to discover plenty of things about yourself. The best places to travel are not those, which are teeming with tourists but the places, which are rich with cultural heritage, and help you acquaint yourself with nature. Backpacking trips worldwide are good places to start with. Exploring the pyramids in Egypt or Colosseum present in Rome gives you an entirely new perspective.

You will find that you are no longer worried about the minor irritations and start embracing life, as you should. When you get away from your comfort zone and venture into the unknown, it will help you realize how truly adaptive you are. You learn to fend for yourself, if you travel alone or manage to cooperate with others, if you travel in groups. Any way you look at it, travel speeds up your development largely.

I’ve seen many people skip their breakfast to curb the calories and lose weight fast or just due to lack of time. Unfortunately skipping meals particularly breakfast makes it more difficult to control your weight gain. Eating sparsely or not at all in the morning will force you to eat more during lunch or binge on snacks to stop your hunger. Breakfast is also the first meal of the day that helps you get along through the best part of your day. So taking a hearty breakfast is the right way to kick-start your day. Here are some excellent and mouth-watering recipes to make your breakfast appetizing and fulfilling.

Egg and Avocado toast

Simple meals are the best always. Hence, I’ve started with this recipe. Take two whole grain bread slices and toast them lightly. Top a slice with avocado smashed nicely. Sprinkle some pepper and salt on the avocado. Top the avocado with two halves of eggs with their sunny side pointed up. Stack the bread in an airtight container or turn it into a sandwich by boiling the eggs well.

Banana Peanut butter Smoothie

Smoothies form a power packed and fun filled meal that can be taken at any time in a day. They are rich in fibre, nutrients, fruits, vegetables and antioxidants. Take a frozen banana and blend it with peanut butter of about 2 tablespoons. Add some ice cubes and one cup of almond milk and blend well. If you are using the smoothie as morning snack, store it in an airtight container and take it with you to work or the gym. If you are making a smoothie for lunch, prepare it the previous night and freeze it. Remove the smoothie and by lunchtime, it will be ready to eat. For added protein boost, use vanilla or chocolate protein.

The need for relaxation can be viewed as a lazy excuse to sit around and do nothing by some but the fact remains that the human body is not an automated machine and requires periods of recuperation in order to function at its highest capacity. One cannot maintain a continuous work rate without stopping to recover their strength every now and then and it is essential to ensure that one has gotten adequate rest before embarking on another energy draining endeavor.

With this in mind, relaxation offers a means of recovering one’s energy in an enjoyable manner and ensuring that their body is able to maintain a high functioning work rate when necessary. There are a number of simple methods of relaxing that can be applied by those wishing to gain some extra strength during the day. These methods are particularly easy and do not require a huge amount of commitment or resources in order to be carried out.

The search for suitable relaxation methods can be compared to that of looking for LED grow lights on pages like this one. As plants require a certain amount of light in order to grow, the human body is also suited to certain relaxation methods as compared to others depending on elements such as the amount of energy that is spent by an individual. Different individuals require different levels of relaxation and it is essential to ensure that the kinds of methods that are applied are also suitable to that person in particular. Different people are relaxed by different things and thus when one is choosing a suitable process to apply to their lifestyle, a certain level of self scrutiny is required in order to determine what method available is best suited to them.

Looking for an adequate relaxation technique will depend on a number of variables such as the character of that individual and issues such as what they enjoy doing during their free time. What an individual enjoys doing in a most cases serves as the best means of relaxation for those particular individuals but this is not always true depending on what that pastime activity entails. Finding a suitable relaxation method can be compared to a visit to http://plantozoid.com/best-grow-lights-reviews-guide/ in search of good grow lights.

The method chosen will depend on what is needed and not necessarily what an individual might find attractive. A lover of sports may find that participating in a certain sporting activity serves to help them relax for example. But if this same individual already expels a lot of energy in their daily routine then it would not be wise to add a sporting activity in the middle of their work schedule as a relaxation solution as that would just leave them feeling more tired than they were before.

It should be noted that there are two types of relaxation. The relaxation of an individual’s mind which holds a more psychological effect than a physical one and the relaxation of one’s body which involves gaining needed rest when the opportunity arises. Some of the more popular methods of relaxing includes simple activities such as watching TV and listening to music while other more advanced techniques such as yoga has been introduced to the public in recent times.

Life without music is unimaginable. Music has been with us long before we learnt to speak. While everyone loves to hear good music not all of us are able to create it. This is because most of us don’t get the opportunity to learn or did not have the inclination to do so. But music is one skill that you can learn at any age. I can hear you ask, ‘why put in the effort as I’m not going to perform’. There are several reasons to learn to play a musical instrument. Here are a few.

High Intelligence quotient

When compared to people who are not exposed to learning music, those who had proper music education are smarter and perform well in academics. Abstract reasoning skills are enhanced in children so they perform well in school.

Improved social life

Children who are part of a musical team develop social skills faster. They learn how to relate to other people, how to work as a group and appreciate rewards they get by working together. Further good discipline and leadership skills are also developed.

Makes you feel carefree

Studies done on the advantages learning music gives reveal that regular playing of a musical instrument helps you to relax. It lowers heart rate, blood pressure and the hormone cortisol, which is responsible for stress. Thus you are able to relax. Although listening to music gives these benefits, they are more marked when you learn to play an instrument and play it regularly. This keeps the stress hormones at bay.

Music also helps you to connect with others easily. It helps you unwind all the worries of your life when compared to the other ways that people use to relax such as watching TV, drinking, web browsing etc. And learning instruments like piano is easier nowadays as you have the digital pianos, which help to learn easily and efficiently.

Build confidence

When you are able to play a musical instrument well you become confident of your own skills and this is enhanced more as time passes helping in shaping your future well.

Patience

Since learning a musical instrument is not something that can occur overnight you can learn patience. Daily practice and learning to correct the mistakes helps in developing patience. Most of the musicians pass several years of practice, which includes musical exercises performed daily and practicing difficult pieces regularly.

Improves memory

Memory and music are interrelated. When you learn to play a piano, for instance you use both parts of your brain, which helps in boosting your memory power.

Creativity

When we fall into a daily routine of work, it is easy to lose touch with our creative nature. When you learn to play a musical instrument, especially when you reach the advanced music grades, you can make your creative side alive. Music education stimulates your cognitive, emotional, and mental abilities, so you are able to think out of the box enhancing your creativity more.

And last but not the least, knowing how to play a musical instrument is pure fun. Music is so profound that it needs to be approached with intensity and joy. Music can bring in the fun factor that you miss in your life. It can lift your spirits, keep you at peace with yourself, and make you feel fulfilled and happy.

Golf is one sport that may seem low key at the outset but in fact gives you plenty of benefits. In fact, you’ll be surprised at the kinds of benefits it gives. Golfers who carry their bag and walk can burn up to 721 calories. Those who use a pull cart can burn 718 calories, while a golfer who walks but uses a caddie burns 613 calories. Even those who ride a golf cart get to burn 411 calories averagely.

Medical research on diabetes and other diseases claims that the risk of such diseases can be reduced when you burn about 2,500 calories in a week. Thus, when you play more golf rounds it can influence your healthy lifestyle a great deal. Here are other benefits that playing golf can bring.

Stress relief

When you play golf, the activity helps in releasing potent and natural mood enhancing hormones called endorphins from the brain. This helps in relaxing you and you’ll feel all the stress and worries fade away gradually.

Creativity

Based on where you hit the ball, you have to strategize your next shot. This takes much of your concentration. You’ll need to be highly creative to get good scores. And if you need to play a better game, you can use advanced rangefinders like those available at http://rangefinderadvice.com/

Boosts brainpower

It has been found that playing golf delays dementia onset as it stimulates the blood circulation to brain and further improves the connections between the nerve cells. Further, when you swing the golf club it challenges you on various levels. You have to strategize, concentrate, coordinate, and add up a long series of numbers.

Longer lifespan

A study, done in Sweden, reveals that individuals who played golf regularly have about 40 percent less mortality rate, when compared to their peers. This amounts to about 5 years increase in your life expectancy.

Sleep well

The regular daytime golf play provides sufficient activity, so you will not be having problems in getting a good night’s sleep. And the sleep is deep and lasts for a longer span too.

Fitness

Playing golf gives you excellent cardiovascular health, as while playing golf you have to walk about 6 miles and burn around 1500 calories. But this is not as marked, if you use the modern power carts which do nothing to your cardiovascular health.

Socializing

Even your worst day of playing golf will seem better if you play it with friends. Golf offers a unique opportunity to socialize as you walk miles with your buddies in a serene setting with no other distraction. Just as in football, basketball, cricket, or any other sport, golf has its own set of frequently used and unique lingo. You need to be adept at is just as you practice your swing and grip. This will make you belong.

Good vision

You need to have good eyesight to locate where the ball you hit had landed. Each time you hit the ball, the practice you get while searching for it is certainly good for your eyesight. And this is more so in case you hit the ball into a bush or outside the golf course.

My sister complains that she doesn’t have any time for herself with all the chores she has to do at home and the work that waits for her at office. Women spend about 16 hours a week doing household chores. When you add this up with the office hours they put in, they are left with very little time for themselves and their family. If you look at the successful people, you’ll find that they spend time daily or at least in the weekends with their loved ones and indulge in a hobby they like such as reading or some sports activity. It is everyone’s prerogative to plan their workday, so they leave some time to relax and enjoy their life. Here are some tips that help you deal with your time in a better way.

Delegating tasks

One of the simplest ways to reduce the burden of chores is to delegate the work to others. This is how organizations get their job done on time. Think of your home as an office and assign chores even to the smallest member in the household. Make sure you assign age appropriate tasks for the little ones such as folding grocery bags, sorting socks, setting the table, putting their toys away etc. This will free you up considerably and let you complete each day’s work on that day itself instead of saving everything for the weekend.

Choose tools wisely

Make sure you choose your home appliances wisely, so all the work is done smoothly and fast. Good quality appliances last longer and don’t worry you with constant maintenance services. For mending clothes or making new ones getting a latest model machine such as the serger available at http://sergerpro.com/ is a wise choice.

Automated work

Since payments have been made simpler with mobile and internet banking, set up your payments and other shopping through the internet. With online shopping, you can make recurring orders for office supplies, groceries, dog food and other such items easily and most of these are home delivered for free so you’ll not be paying anything extra.

Ideal shopping time

Whenever you think of shopping, do it in off peak hours. Wednesday nights are the quietest and the best time to shop without crowds. And don’t go for shopping without a list made on the things you need. You needn’t spend time separately for writing the list. Just write it while you are waiting in your physician’s office or when an operator puts you on hold. Schedule trips in such a way that you are not caught up in the morning or evening rush.

Multitasking

Multitasking is the best way to finish pending chores before time. Most of the tasks you have in mind take only a few minutes to complete. For instance, you can empty your dishwasher, when you wait for the pasta to boil or fold the laundry, as you watch your favorite show.

Sunday is one day of the week when you are absolutely free. Make the most of it. Plan some fun activity or a low-key one to do on Sunday evening, such as a movie night or family barbecue, so you are not much stressed out about Monday morning.

Leading a workaholic life has become a normal occurrence nowadays. Wherever I turn, I can see people hurrying to do some job or other. They work late into the night and wake up early. There is little or no time left whatsoever to see to anything else. This kind of rollercoaster ride has only one end and that is a bitter one.

Not that I’m being pessimistic, or foretelling doomsday, but at the rate people keep taxing their mind and body, disaster is inevitable. But one thing is clear. We need to pause and reconsider our lifestyle and try to change the disastrous pattern. One way to balance work and personal life is to take up some kind of physical activity that you enjoy. Here are some of the benefits you get by participating in some kind of activity.

Stress management

Physical activity is a key recommendation put forward by health care professionals. According to them the sports and regular exercise, helps in calming any worries that disturb you, and make you think clearly. You need not excel in a sport to play it and get the benefits. Even if you are not in shape, you can feel the tension leave you as you participate in the activity.

Feel buoyant

When you involve in physical activity, your body releases mood-enhancing hormones, endorphins in the brain. These hormones generate an exhilarated feeling in you. Termed as runner’s high, this is seen in people who participate in hiking, basketball, and tennis. I feel my mood lift, whenever I ride my longboard. I’d bought it at LB Nation for me on my birthday some time ago. Ever since, I’ve been riding it and have mastered many of the advanced moves. The excitement and thrill you get from doing an activity you enjoy is beyond words and it is good for our health too in a way.

Relaxation

The electrical activity recorded in muscles that are tense show reduced activity immediately after a workout session. There is also a noticeable reduction in jitters and hyperactivity conditions. The blood vessels relax, heart rate and blood pressure reduce, the exact opposite of which occurs when you worry too much. Many of the challenging situations we face in life causes stress buildup and high glucose levels. Diabetics are therefore advised to take up any sport they like to keep free of tension and the resultant glucose spike.

Diversion

Recreational sports activities helps in relieving stress as they divert your attention from the anxieties and worries you have waiting back at work or home. Kayaking, racquetball, longboarding, hiking, and any other activity you fancy keeps you occupied and make you forget your worries. In a way, these activities are like meditation. People usually feel a sense of achievement and increased self-confidence after they engage in such activities.

The best thing about taking up such activities is that they make you take up healthy behaviors. You will find that you prefer nutritious meals, beverages, and snacks after taking part in the sports activities. Sleep problems, which crop up with stress and worry ease away with the increased activity levels. You’ll find that in addition to relaxing you, your overall fitness levels too improve markedly.

From the days of Stone Age, when man had very few resources at his disposal to the present day, the focus had been on making life easier than before. Whether it was the invention of the wheel, light bulb or the latest smartphones, we tend to gravitate towards creating things that make us live in comfort and reduce our workload. The irony of these inventions is that man has worked endlessly to make himself work less. Regardless it is clear that technology is something, which we cannot do without. Here are some top technological inventions that have made us breathe easy and enjoy our life more.

Tools and gadgets

You can find endless tools and machines, which we take for granted now, but had been invented to reduce the work that we considered as menial. From sewage management, and urban energy management, to data exchange the various tools and machines that are used in the government bodies and at homes have increased the convenience in our lives greatly.

Communication

The days when we wrote long handwritten letters and waited for them to be delivered are long past. Now technology makes it easy to get in touch with the click of a button or in case of a smartphone just a touch of your fingertip. Even the most confidential communication and documents are done digitally in seconds, making the entire world very small indeed. You can easily talk to a person in another part of the world while you have your coffee or do your morning workout. In fact, you can have an entire gym at your disposal right at your home, with devices such as the power racks at Garage Gym Pro.

Be updated

It is necessary to be aware of what is happening around the world in the present scenario. The different jobs that people hold now demand a meticulous update of the global events. Since technology has a strong penetration, this is easily achieved. You can now watch or hear breaking news via your smartphone, while on the move.

Travelling

Earlier travelling was considered a tedious job mainly because of the elaborate arrangements that had to be made to make it possible. But technology has made it easy to manage all the travel arrangements so that even a child can make the reservations and planning. Internet is a great boon to us. You can now browse the options present, plan the schedule and travel as much as you can without a single hitch.

Business management

Businesses have profited the most with technology. From the laptops to laser pointers, and simulators businesses can now have a wide range of possibilities to enhance and boost their profits. Take for instance, the common presentations done in offices. While earlier these used to take a whole day, nowadays these can be done in under half an hour. And it is fun too.

From virtual classrooms to social networks, our entire lives have been changed for the better with the various technological inventions that have occurred. And the trend is all set to become more enhanced, which leaves us to wonder why then are we suffering from anxiety and stress more than ever before.

About me

Hey! Glad to have you here! Coffee, Tea, Toast is all about chilling lifestyle. Look through the website to see my personal advice and other insights on how to lead a better life!